


bad moon rising

by angriff (refusals)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Attempted Rape, Community: snkkink, Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault, Gen, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:45:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/refusals/pseuds/angriff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He goes through the events of that night over and over in his head, tearing his memory apart trying to fill in the blanks, but it’s like searching for the word <i>dendrochronology</i> in a dictionary that has the entire D section ripped out. He stands in front of a mirror for an entire hour one evening, running his hands along his body feeling sick to his stomach as he searches for a familiar touch, a ghost of sensation, searches for any hint at all of what happened, but unlike the rings of trees and their intimate tales, he can unearth no such stories on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bad moon rising

**Author's Note:**

> written for this [snkkink prompt](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/3666.html?thread=6163282#cmt6163282)
> 
> please heed the tags for the warnings, i cannot stress that enough. more specific warnings include: vomit, non-graphic violence, self-blame, and a very brief discussion about whether or not a survivor has the responsibility to report their attacker.

Jean hadn’t even really wanted to go.  
  
In the end, it’s Reiner who persuades him, because that’s just what Reiner does, because no matter how much you think you’re not in the mood for ale and fireworks and shooting galleries, Reiner will always manage to convince you that it’ll be The Best Time Ever and the next thing you know, you’re in a beergarten on your second pint and being chatted up by some boy from another division who can’t seem to take his eyes off your mouth when you talk.  
  
His name is Florian and he is tall and handsome and Jean cannot for the life of him understand why someone who looks like  _that_  would ever even so much as cast a glance towards someone like  _him._  This, when coupled with the fact that Jean is surrounded by a gaggle of infinitely more appealing options, makes for a very baffling situation. He isn’t beautiful like Mikasa or fit like Reiner or infectiously friendly like Sasha. Yet here’s this guy, with his dark hair and dimpled smile, this guy who could probably have anyone he wanted here except for maybe Ymir, and he’s acting as though Jean is the only person in the room.  
  
At first, it had weirded Jean out. When he’d caught the boy staring at him from the table across from them, Jean's immediate thought was that the guy wanted to start a fight. Jean conveyed this concern to Marco, who assessed the situation for a moment before coming to an entirely different conclusion, one which was apparently supported by the rest of their friends once they were also briefed on the state of affairs.  
  
“W-what do I do?” Jean had spluttered helplessly in the face of this unexpected turn of events.  
  
“You go for it,” Ymir replied with a careless shrug, like it was the easiest thing in the world.  
  
Well, maybe it was, for her. Once upon a time Jean would have scoffed at the thought of Ymir having game, but considering she somehow managed to snag the girl of her dreams, the girl of  _everyone’s_  dreams, she clearly knows what she’s talking about.  
  
So, when the boy eventually sidles up to their table and asks if he can join them while he waits for his friends, Jean scoots over to give him a place to sit.  
  
The more they talk and the more they drink, the easier it gets. Maybe it’s the booze or maybe it’s the confidence lent to him by the circumstances, but Jean comes to realise that he can totally do this after all. He can look up from under his eyelashes and exaggerate the movement of his lips when he speaks and make his touches linger long enough to entice but still fleeting enough to tempt. It’s all so foreign and out of character for him but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying playing the part. It’s almost a relief, really, to be stepping out of his own skin like this. To be able to forget the boy he really is - insecure, unapproachable, unhappy - and instead become the kind of person that others might actually find attractive and be interested in, even if it’s just for a night.  
  
Every now and then, however, it occurs to him that he’s not quite sure why he’s doing this, what he expects to get out of it. Sure, Florian is kind of disgustingly attractive, but Jean isn’t exactly looking for either a fast fuck or a soulmate, so he supposes his reciprocation of the other boy’s actions could be construed as Jean leading him on. Then again, he tells himself, who’s to say that Florian feels any differently? Jean figures he is overanalysing the entire situation, blowing it all out of proportion when the reality of it is merely this: they are young, they have the night off, and they fucking deserve to have a good time.  
  
With this in mind, Jean drains the last of his second beer with a renewed vengeance, feeling oddly liberated.  
  
“Hey,” Florian says, “I’m gonna go get another drink, want me to get you one, too?”  
  
Jean nods vigorously, slamming his now-empty stein down onto the table. He fumbles with his pockets for some money but a hand closes gently around one of his wrists to stop him.  
  
“This one’s on me,” Florian says, voice a venomous velvet, smile like sickeningly sweet liqueur.  _“I insist.”_  

 

* * *

 

Jean is halfway through the third beer when it hits him. One moment he’s fine and the next, the air is suddenly too hot and suffocatingly thick, like he’s packed into a small room with too many other people. He tries to shrug off his jacket but his arms seem to have become leaden, and he glances down at his hands, surprised to see that they exist when he can’t actually feel them.  
  
It’s the strangest sensation, like he’s disappearing. Like he’s being erased. He may not have as much experience with alcohol as some of his peers, but he’s never gotten this drunk off this little – hell, he’s not even sure what he’s feeling right now can really be described as drunkenness at all. He’s never felt this way before, not even when he  _was_  properly wasted.  
  
“I don’t feel so good,” he hears himself say to no one in particular, but it’s so loud around them that he’s only heard by Krista and Florian, who are sitting on either side of him.  
  
“You don’t look so good either,” Krista concurs worriedly. “Do you want me to get you a cup of water?”  
  
Jean doesn’t trust himself to speak again without the contents of his stomach accompanying whatever words come out of his mouth so he just nods, which turns out to be worse in a way, because the world starts bobbing before his eyes and doesn’t stop. He stares down at his lap, struggling to bring everything back into balance, and he sees Florian’s hand resting on his thigh. The gesture would be more comforting if only he could actually feel it.  
  
_What the fuck is going on?_  Jean wonders, and he can’t remember what he’s doing here – where  _is_  'here' anyway? – and someone is hauling him to his feet, his arm is slung across that person’s shoulders and they’re moving and someone else is cackling “Dude, you are  _so_  wasted,” presumably about Jean.  _I’m not,_  he tries to say, tries to say  _Help me, I don’t know what’s happening to me,_  but it’s hard to talk when your tongue feels like a dead fish, wet and heavy between your teeth, so nothing comes out, and Jean is afraid. Though the roiling blurriness of his mind doesn’t leave much room for feeling anything at all, there is still a certain panic he can sense within all that fog, wriggling and thrashing in terror like a rabbit in a bag.  
  
Florian’s face flickers into focus next to his, and he’s speaking, Jean knows this because he can hear it, but for some reason he can’t make sense of any of the words. Maybe he’s speaking another language? …No, he’s not. It takes every last ounce of Jean’s concentration to figure out what Florian is saying. He sounds like he’s underwater.  
  
“You’re okay,” Florian is murmuring soothingly, “You just had a little too much to drink, but I’m gonna take care of you, okay? Everything’s going to be okay.”  
  
Like a child who sleeps soundly after his parents assure him there are no monsters in the closet or under his bed, Jean surrenders himself to darkness, unaware that the monster has been right there alongside him the entire time.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, sorry I took so long,” Krista says as she returns to their table with a cup of water, “There was a really long lineup at the— Wait, where’s Jean?”  
  
“He went off with his new boytoy,” Eren grumbles, like he’s personally offended that Jean has chosen someone else’s company over theirs, which Krista doesn’t think makes much sense because she thought Eren couldn’t stand the guy, so maybe it’s just the principal of the thing.  
  
Krista’s frown deepens. “Did he seem okay?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Eren replies, looking puzzled. “I guess…?”  
  
“He was  _waaay_  drunk,” Connie offers, “But that’s all.”  
  
There’s a general murmur of agreement from some of the others, then Eren mutters, “Who wants to bet he was just faking it so he could sneak off with Fabian.”  
  
“Florian,” Marco corrects absently, seeming distracted.  
  
“Flannigan?”  
  
“Jäger’s just bitter ‘cause he’s not getting any,” Ymir snickers, slinging an arm across Krista’s shoulders as if she’s trying to prove a point.  
  
Normally, Krista would melt right back into the other girl’s touch and disappear like a raindrop into the ocean, but she can’t shake the ominous feeling that something just isn’t quite right. She’d been sitting next to Jean the whole time they’ve been here, and though a lot of it was spent wrapped up in various conversations, she could swear that he hadn’t had nearly enough to drink to induce the kind of state he’d appeared to be in.  
  
“I don’t know, you guys,” she presses, “He really didn’t look so good. Does anyone remember how much he had to drink?”  
  
Marco, who’d been strangely distant this entire time, suddenly seems to snap back into focus and he says quietly, “We each got a beer with our currywurst earlier, then he had another when we first got to this beergarten, and then Florian bought him one here, too. I think that’s it.”  
  
Reiner snickers. “Lightweight.”  
  
“Hey, not all of us can be built like a fucking mountain, okay,” Connie objects.  
  
“Look, I’m sure he’s fine,” Reiner assures everyone. “Worst case scenario, he’s probably just puking in the bushes somewhere.”  
  
Krista considers this for a moment and supposes Reiner is right, plus at least Jean isn’t out there alone. Jean also isn’t the type to take too kindly to people poking around in his business, so he would probably be pretty peeved if they went looking for him when he’d wanted a little privacy. With that in mind, she forces herself to relax and takes another sip of her cider.

 

* * *

 

The next time Jean opens his eyes, he has no idea where he is or how he got there, all he knows is he’s propped up against a wall with vomit wet and warm down the front of his shirt, there are people talking somewhere above him, and he just wants to go home.  
  
“Dude,” someone is saying, sounding disgusted, “He’s all fucked-up.”  
  
“Well, what did you expect?” Florian’s voice this time, except it’s different than Jean remembers. Colder. Meaner.  
  
“I don’t want puke on my dick.”  
  
“Then I guess you’ll just have to wait your turn.”  
  
The two of them continue to exchange words, but Jean has again lost the ability to decipher them, has already forgotten what they were talking about in the first place. His eyes are heavy,  _so fucking heavy,_  as though there are anchors fastened to each one of his eyelashes, and he wants to go to sleep so fucking badly but the fear is still there, the only discernible thing beneath all this fog, and it’s telling him something is very very wrong so he has to stay awake.  
  
Some good that does him.  
  
Because he is awake when they manhandle him onto the floor and he is awake when they cut his soiled shirt from his body so they can run their hands across his chest and back.  
  
He is awake and yet he cannot stop any of it.  
  
He is horrified by how easily they are able to maneuver him, shaping his body to their will like he is a wet string of clay, sodden and pliant, a helpless prisoner in a useless, traitorous vessel. He tries to speak, tries to say  _stop_  or  _no_  or  _please_ , the panic inside him spiking as he realises, even through the haziness in his brain, the terrifying inevitability of what is about to happen to him. He can’t fight back, can’t scream for help, can’t even so much as thrash his legs out in protest when his pants and underwear are yanked unceremoniously down to his knees.  
  
There is a weight on top of him, rutting against his back, a boy’s wolfish laughter a hot hungry tickle in his ear.  
  
Jean closes his eyes and waits for it to be over.

 

* * *

 

Marco casts yet another glance around the crowded beergarten, searching for that familiar face. He hasn’t been able to do much else ever since Jean left with Florian maybe fifteen minutes ago, his apprehension only deepening once Krista’s question about how much Jean had had to drink made Marco realise that something just wasn’t adding up.  
  
He’s shaken out of his daze when he receives a light jab to his ribs, causing him to let out an undignified yelp as he whirls around to glare at the perpetrator.  
  
“Sorry, man,” Reiner says quickly, holding his hands out in front of him apologetically, “It’s just… You’re totally zoning out on us. You all right?”  
  
Marco swallows hard but he can’t keep the dry break out of his voice when he says, “I’m going to go look for Jean.”  
  
He feels several pairs of worried eyes trained on him as he abruptly stands up from the table and prepares to leave.  
  
“Hey,” Eren says, voice uncharacteristically gentle, “I’m sure everything’s okay and he’s just—”   
  
“I’ll come with you,” Krista pipes up suddenly.  
  
“Guess this means I’m coming too,” Ymir sighs, and Marco doesn’t know who the fuck she’s trying to fool with that long-suffering tone in her voice when everyone knows just how willing she is to drop anything she’s doing at a moment's notice in order to keep an eye on Krista, despite the fact that Krista has always proven to be more than capable of looking after herself.  
  
Marco blinks a few times, surprised by the unexpected support, but feeling a bit guilty about it, too. “You guys can stay here,” he says feebly, not wanting to ruin anyone else’s good time just because he’s paranoid and has an overactive imagination. “Eren’s probably right and it’s probably nothing, but…” He trails off uncertainly, not sure where he was going with that sentence.  
  
“‘But?’” Ymir repeats expectantly. When Marco just gives her a helpless shrug, she sighs again and says, “Look, I didn’t like the way old Flo was looking at him, to be honest.”  
  
Marco’s mouth goes dry at the implications in Ymir’s statement. He nods silently and motions for her and Krista to follow him.  
  
The beergarten they were in lies at the southernmost edge of the festival’s perimeter. Marco had watched Jean and Florian leave and if he recalls correctly, they had started walking  _away_  from the festival as opposed to wading deeper into it. He supposes this might make their task a bit easier since there isn’t really much in this direction aside from what appears to be a small storage building. He thinks he remembers someone mentioning that this expanse of land used to be a training ground for the Scouting Legion until its enrollment rate hit such a low that having more than one training camp became superfluous.  
  
When they reach the small warehouse, they are far enough from the action that all that can be heard from the festivities is distant music, but it is still close enough to reasonably believe someone in Jean’s state could have made it there, with some assistance.  
  
The door is closed, but Marco can hear a muffled bark of laughter coming from within, and there is nothing he wants to do more  _or_  less than see what’s waiting for them on the other side. Both Krista and Ymir have been so quiet that he’s almost forgotten they were with him until Ymir shoulders her way past him and turns the doorknob.  
  
It’s so fucking cliché, but Marco swears that time stops when the door opens. More than just time, actually. Every cell, every ion screeches to a complete halt. The blood freezes over in his veins. The oceans suspend their endless flux. The stars hold their gaseous breath and the planets all cease to turn.  
  
The only things not to come to a standstill are the two boys who continue to loom over the prone figure on the floor like vultures circling an ailing animal in an ever-tightening perimeter, waiting for it to die.  
  
Florian looks up from where he’d been straddling Jean’s bare legs, pants tugged down to his thighs and left hand lazily pumping his cock, like he hasn’t got a care in the world.  
  
He smiles placidly at them and says, “Come to join in on the fun?”  
  
His obscene words combined with how terrifyingly blasé he’s acting in such a horrific scenario - like he's offering them a cup of coffee, not a fucking  _human being_  - this all seems to break the spell. Ymir lets out an enraged roar and lunges forward before either Marco or Krista can react. She hauls Florian up by the collar of his shirt and hurls him to the ground, kicking him squarely in the ribs for good measure, but that split-second delay gives the other boy enough time to grab her by the hair and punch her so hard in the face that she falls backwards, dazed.  
  
Marco is still rooted to the spot. He feels like he’s not really there as he watches Krista shove the boy off of Ymir before she kneels down next to the crumpled form on the floor – Jean, Marco tells himself dully; that body on the floor with his clothes ripped from him and his cheek resting in his own vomit is  _Jean_.  
  
Krista removes her jacket and lays it across Jean's lower body while she starts talking quietly to him. Marco can’t hear what she’s saying, but he can imagine her soothing voice, like honeyed gold, sweetening even the bitterest of fears.  
  
Meanwhile, Florian is swearing in a multilingual string of curses as he tucks himself back into his pants. He grabs his friend’s arm, then they both stagger to their feet and make towards the door. Towards Marco. He braces himself, fully prepared to not let either of them leave the room, but their combined strength bowls him right over and they are able to make their escape.  
  
Marco leaps back to his feet and starts off after them when he hears Krista’s voice calling his name, ringing out clear over the frenzied sound of blood roaring in his skull.   
  
“Marco,” Krista says again, quieter this time, “We can deal with them later. Jean needs you right now.”  
  
Marco hesitates, torn between the desire to comfort his friend and the compulsion to chase those fuckers down and rip them apart, but he takes one glance over his shoulder at Jean - at his slack limbs and glassy half-hooded eyes and the tears tracking a shiny snail trail down his face - and he knows that Krista is right. His place is here.  
  
Marco drops to his knees next to Jean with a low cry, reaching out a cautious hand before realising that perhaps touching him is not the best idea right now. Jean, however, does not seem to notice him at all. Krista has managed to pull Jean’s pants up to his thighs and his unfocused eyes flicker briefly in her direction, but he has yet to really acknowledge any of their presences.  
  
“Jean,” Marco says delicately, sickened by how he is using the same voice as he does when he is trying to calm a spooked horse.

This isn’t some jumpy, easily-frightened animal who will flee at the sound of a branch cracking underfoot, this is _Jean._  This is his best friend, his smart, brazen, unapologetic best friend with a fist for a heart and a mouth like a pistol, and Marco never thought he'd see the day when someone was able to beat that fight out of him.

“It’s me,” Marco continues softly. “It’s Marco. Krista and Ymir are here, too. You… you’re safe now.”  
  
Nothing.  
  
“Is he okay?” Ymir asks from somewhere behind him, her voice sounding all blocked up as she pinches her bleeding, possibly broken nose.  
  
“What do you fucking think?” Marco snaps, and immediately feels bad for letting his nerves get the better of him. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I… I didn’t—”  
  
“Shut it, Bodt,” Ymir cuts in; her way of letting him know she understands.  
  
Marco sends her a grateful nod, then turns back to Jean. He’s finally started to stir, coughing a little as he struggles to focus his vision.  
  
“Jean?” Marco whispers hopefully.  
  
Jean makes a noise that is more of a pained moan than a word and makes a valiant but enormously unsuccessful attempt to lift himself up off the ground.  
  
“Don’t move,” Marco says quickly, and Jean does indeed stop moving, but Marco has a feeling that it has less to do with him being cognizant of Marco’s command and everything to do with his body simply being unable to handle the strain.  
  
This is when the gravity of the situation really hits Marco in earnest. Jean is a fucking  _wreck_  – he can’t move, can’t speak, and from the looks of the vomit smeared across his cheek and on the floor it seems as though he hadn’t even had the strength to raise his head to be sick. He’s as helpless as a newborn fawn, and Florian and that other creep had been not only wolves, but  _gods_  when it came to the utter imbalance of power between them.  
  
A blast of fury surges through Marco that is unlike anything he has ever felt, and he clings to it desperately because he knows the alternative is fear and grief and pain, all of which he will have plenty of time to experience later. He is shocked that someone could be so disgusting as to do this to another human being, and yet at the same time, he believes it all too easily. What really sickens him the most is how deliberate it all was. This wasn’t just done on an impulse or a compulsion, wasn't just a crime of passion committed during a disastrous lapse of control. This was a cold, calculated, premeditated violation, and Marco shudders to think of what would have happened had they not come bursting through the door when they had.  
  
A sickening thought suddenly occurs to him.  
  
It seems they had managed to pull Florian off of Jean in time, but what about the other boy?  
  
“Krista,” Marco rasps through the lump in his throat. “When you were… helping him… Did you, you know,  _see…_  Do you know if anything… happened…?”  
  
“I d-don’t think they…” Krista’s voice wobbles and she takes a sharp, shuddering breath. “I think we got here just in time.”  
  
Ymir lets out an abrasive, unhappy laugh. “Not soon enough.”

 

* * *

 

Jean is floundering on the edges of consciousness when he hears the voices.  
  
Warm, familiar, murmuring _you're safe now._  
  
Safe?  
  
He will never feel safe again.

 

* * *

 

Consciousness returns to Jean in gradual degrees, one pain awakening after the other in a crawling composition before finally culminating in a cadence of gasping, heaving panic. The bedsheets that cling sweat-snarled to his leaden limbs feel too much like hands holding him down, and he can’t figure out why this sensation is suddenly so upsetting to him but he doesn’t have much time to think about it when there is heat surging up into the back of his throat and he realises he is going to be sick.  
  
Like magic, a basin appears before him and he just barely has the time to sit himself upright and hunch over it before he’s puking up watery strings of yellow bile, the pressure behind his eyes becoming almost unbearable. When the gagging and choking finally stops and he can see again, he notices that the basin is being held by two large, steady hands. His gaze follows those hands up their arms and onto the person they belong to.  
  
Marco’s face is drawn and pale, eyes nestled in bruise-coloured circles. Jean feels like he’s been asleep for a thousand years, but Marco looks like he’s been awake for days.  
  
He takes the soiled basin away from Jean’s lap and sets it aside before he pours a glass of water from the jug sitting on the nightstand. He makes to tip it into Jean’s mouth but Jean will be damned if he lets himself be coddled in this way, if he can’t even so much as  _drink_  on his own, so he seizes the glass himself, pleased at the way he is able to keep a grip on it even when his arms threaten to wilt from a bone-deep exhaustion that gnaws at his entire body. The cup trembles in his grasp as he brings it to his lips and gulps it down greedily, not paying any mind to the drops that dribble down his chin.  
  
“Jean, slow down,” Marco says quietly, reaching out to take the glass from him.  
  
Jean does nothing of the sort, swatting Marco's hand away. He hadn’t realised just how parched he’d been until he’d taken that first sip, and now he doesn’t think he could stop to save his life.  
  
He learns his lesson not even five minutes later, when he pukes the water right back up, along with even more stomach acid.  
  
Marco is silent the entire time, just patiently holding the bowl in front of Jean until the heaving stops, then he stands up and says, “I’m going to go rinse this out.”  
  
Jean watches him leave the room, startled by how disproportionately anxious he feels at the thought of being alone, even though Marco is just outside the door. He doesn’t even know where exactly he is right now, just that it’s a small single room, the kind wounded soldiers get put up in to recover from their injuries, if they’re important enough.  
  
Not if they were too drunk to make it back to their own dorm, which is the only reason Jean can come up with as to why he’s here.  
  
He tries to piece together the events of last night. The festival. His friends. Music. Beer. A boy…?  
  
Jean remembers moving aside to let a tall, handsome stranger sit beside him in one of the beer gardens, then absolutely nothing.  
  
A total void. Utter blankness. An entire night wiped out of his memory completely. Everything gone except for this creeping, unplaceable _wrongness_  that he can’t quite put his finger on.  
  
When Marco slips back into the room, Jean stares him squarely in the eye and asks in a surprisingly steady voice, “What happened to me?”  
  
Marco does not speak until he’s returned to his seat next to the bed. “W-what…” His voice cracks and he tries again. “What do you remember?”  
  
“We were in a beergarten,” Jean says matter-of-factedly. “A hot guy came to sit with us. You guys all seemed to think he was hitting on me.”  
  
That’s all he has to say, but Marco continues to look at him expectantly even once he stops talking, making it painfully obvious that a lot more had happened that Marco assumed Jean would be able to recall.  
  
“That’s it?” Marco eventually asks, after a long, loaded silence.  
  
Jean can’t speak around the knot of dread rising in his throat so he just nods.  
  
Marco closes his eyes tightly, laying one hand across his brow as if he’s in pain. The longer he remains quiet, the more frightened Jean becomes, and he has half a mind to ask Marco for the basin again because with each passing millisecond he feels sicker and sicker.  
  
Finally, Marco meets Jean’s gaze and begins brokenly, “That guy bought you a drink a-and… He must’ve put something… You were all fucked-up. We just… we all just thought you were really drunk.” Marco’s expression contorts with anguish and there is a pleading quiver to his tone when he bursts out, “I- I’m sorry, Jean, I’m  _so_  fucking sorry… If I hadn’t… If I’d just… Maybe he wouldn’t’ve…”  
  
Marco keeps babbling a stream of frantic apologies but Jean is no longer listening, too caught up in the implications of it all to be able to think straight. He feels as though the ground has been pulled out from under his feet and he’s caught in that split-second moment between flying and falling where you desperately try to convince yourself it could go either way even though the rational part of you knows the only way to go is down.  
  
He doesn’t want to know what happens next.  
  
He  _needs_  to know what happens next.  
  
“Marco…?” he breathes, his fear audible even through the dry croak of his voice.  
  
“There were two of them,” Marco says, and this time his voice trembles with a barely-suppressed rage, the sheer intensity of which almost makes Jean shrink away from him. “There were two of them and you couldn’t even fucking move.”  
  
Marco seems to take a moment to compose himself, at which point Jean lashes out, frustrated at the lack of details being offered up. “Well…?” he snaps. “Did they fuck me or not?”  
  
Marco flinches at the obscene straightforwardness of Jean’s words. Truth be told, Jean had stunned even himself with his own question, perhaps mostly because he had been fully prepared to believe that nothing had happened, and nothing would, as long as nobody talked about it.  
  
Believing it would have been so easy, seeing as there is an eight hour gap in Jean’s memory wherein anything could have happened – which also means  _nothing_  could have happened. After all, wouldn’t he be able to remember if it had? Surely something that traumatic could not transpire without him being able to recall at least a  _part_  of it...?  
  
But Marco looks pale and sick and he’s whispering, “We don’t know,” and oh, there it is – the drop, the fall, the irreversible plunge.  
  
“W-what do you mean  _you don’t know?”_  Jean demands, a forced aggression in his voice to mask his terror at the fact that his entire world has just bottomed out from under him.  
  
Marco unconsciously clenches and unclenches his fists several times before he recounts to Jean what he does know. How Florian had led him away and nobody had thought much of it until a while later. How Marco, Krista and Ymir had gone searching for him and found him on the floor of an old storehouse, completely at his attackers’ mercy, and how they had pulled Florian off of him in time but couldn’t be sure if anything had happened before that.  
  
“We, um, took a… a quick, uh, look,” Marco stammers, sounding exceedingly uncomfortable, “When we… when we helped… dress you… and… We didn’t… I mean… There weren’t any, like,  _signs…_  But…”  
  
He trails off uncertainly, his eyes flitting nervously across the room – to the wall, the floor, the window, everywhere except Jean’s face. Marco can’t even look at him, Jean realises. That’s how disgusted he must be by him.  
  
Fair enough, Jean thinks.  
  
Thinks maybe this is what he deserves, somehow.  
  
“You should see a medic,” Marco says quietly after a moment.  
  
A feverish dread washes over Jean as he shakes his head vigorously despite the dizziness the movement causes him. No fucking way is he going to go get poked and prodded in the most intimate of places by some stranger, and this time be fully conscious during it, too. It feels like enough of a violation that his own closest friends had done so, as cursory and necessary as it may have been.  
  
He subtly shifts his weight in the bed, slipping a hand beneath the covers and gingerly touching himself, searching for a pain or any other kind of sensation that might hint at what happened – or, hopefully, did not happen. His entire body aches, but not in any way that suggests the worst. Maybe he’ll do a more intimate examination once he has a little privacy, but for now, this is good enough for him.  
  
He pushes this concern out of his mind and focuses on the next one, trying to convince himself that if he keeps everything linear like this, tackles things one by one, then eventually he will reach the end of the queue and everything will be okay.  
  
“Who else knows?” he asks Marco.  
  
Marco looks even more panicked now, and his words tumble out all clumped together when he says, “They… I mean, the group – our friends – they… They were all already here, like, at the barracks, when we got back with you, and, fuck, they saw how your cl-clothes were all… I’m sorry, Jean, I know it wasn’t our place to… to say anything, but I- I was so frazzled, I couldn’t come up with anything on the spot… I just said you’d been… attacked… That’s all. I’m so sorry, I—”  
  
“It’s okay,” Jean cuts in brusquely, and he does mean it.  
  
Despite being utterly mortified, despite the sheer humiliation of knowing that his friends had all borne witness to him in such a despicable state, he also can’t help but to feel a certain sense of relief. At least this way he avoided having to explain it himself. He knows that they would have had to find out sooner or later, so he’s glad he was able to get it over with without even being aware of it.  
  
But Marco still looks incredibly guilty, and he says, “We told Shadis, too.”  
  
Jean winces but otherwise does not respond.  
  
“I’m really sorry,” Marco repeats helplessly, “He let us use this room when he saw how fucked-up you were, but… But he was getting on our asses about what was wrong, he thought you’d been drinking irresponsibly—”  
  
“I was, though, wasn’t I?” Jean says with a dull laugh.  
  
Marco looks horrified, though Jean can’t possibly imagine why. “Fuck. No. God, Jean,  _no.”_  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
This time Marco does look Jean in the eye, but there’s such incredible sorrow there that Jean can’t bear to hold his gaze, knowing that he’s the one causing his friend this pain.  
  
“Jean, listen to me,” Marco says, surprisingly fiercely, “You know this isn’t your fault, right?”  
  
Jean just shrugs, the closest he’s ever come to telling a lie. It may not be his  _fault,_  per se, but that doesn’t mean he’s not to blame for any of it. If he hadn’t been so fucking stupid, so fucking  _desperate_  that he’d throw himself at the very first person who showed him any sign of interest, then maybe nothing would have happened.  
  
…Not that anything did.  
  
“Jean,” Marco repeats.  
  
Jean shakes his head and tries to smile. “Nah. I know. I mean, it’s not like anything happened, though, right?”  
  
“Don’t,” Marco says sharply.  
  
“What? It’s true.”  
  
“Damnit, Jean, will you just  _stop?”_  
  
Marco’s outburst startles Jean, but as soon as he gets over the initial surprise, all he can feel is infuriated by Marco’s persistence. Logically, he knows that Marco is simply trying to help, but at the moment it mostly just feels like Marco wants to make him into some kind of victim. Perhaps it would be easier to interpret Marco’s words as an attempt to validate any feelings Jean might be having about this situation if only Jean  _had_  any feelings about the situation at all, which he does not. Marco appears to think that Jean should be acting all traumatised, but how can he, when he doesn’t even remember what happened? He’s certainly not about to make something out of nothing, to endeavour to draw reasonable conclusions from a text written in a language he only partially understands. That  _is_  all he has to work with here, after all: bits and pieces of a narrative, fragments of memory, only part of the picture.  
  
And, as far as he’s concerned, the part of the picture that he can see shows him absolutely nothing.  
  
Out of sight, out of mind, except that won’t work if Marco keeps trying to convince him that something terrible has happened to him.  
  
He wants desperately to be able to explain this to Marco but doesn’t have it in his heart to start a fight right now, so he abruptly tells Marco that he’s tired and turns away from him, pretending to fall asleep. He’s not sure how long he lays there, waiting for the telltale rhythm of fading footsteps, the all too familiar sound of someone turning their back on him and walking away, but Marco does not budge from his seat and before Jean knows it, he falls asleep for real.

 

* * *

 

They say time heals all wounds, but after spending the next two days virtually bedridden by the lasting side-effects of whatever drug had been slipped to him, Jean finds himself facing the exact opposite of that old adage. Like frostbite that only hurts once it has thawed, the initial glacial numbness that was all he’d been able to feel at first has given way into something much more sinister.  
  
The worst part is just how  _subtle_  it is. He feels caught in the sick confusion one feels immediately after waking up from a nightmare, that fraction of a second before your brain is able to fully recognise that it wasn’t real, except in this instance that fraction lasts forever. It’s ostensibly not as disturbing as being stuck in the nightmare itself, but is nevertheless unsettling in its own unique way. Instead of a torrential downpour, it is an insidious undercurrent of malaise that flows in a constant, silent stream just below the surface. It is a darkness that manages to be imperceptible and crippling at the same time, one that does not totally consume him and yet leaves no part of his life untouched.  
  
It’s in the wary hostility he feels towards anyone who he believes has been looking at him for too long. The new, inexplicable distrust he has of his own body. It’s in the way he suddenly can’t stand to be either alone or in a crowd when he used to consider himself to be his most reliable company.  
  
He has never been one to shy away from confrontation, but this is one that he cannot imagine himself even so much as attempting to face, let alone  _win_ , because it pits him against such an elusive enemy. Haunted by a phantom incident that he feels he doesn’t have the right to be so affected by, he is fighting shadows, chasing ghosts, battling something that may or may not even exist at all.  
  
_It’s all in your head,_  someone tells him, and Jean wonders if this means it’s supposed to hurt any less, because that sure as hell isn’t the case.

 

* * *

 

By the third day, Jean’s body finally feels back to normal except for his continued lack of appetite, and while being able to stay on one’s own two feet for more than five minutes at a time is very exciting and all, it comes with a certain lucidity that almost makes him long for the previous forty-eight hours of nausea and fatigue and confusion. Because now, with his brain having returned to relatively functional status along with the rest of his body, he often finds himself hurtling head-on towards disaster on a runaway train of thought that he can’t ever seem to stop or even divert.  
  
The only way he’s been able to carry on with his daily routine is by exercising total detachment, distancing himself from his own body and mind until he’s more of a voyeur of his own life than a participant. This charade consumes an incredible amount of energy, leaving him practically useless by the end of the day, which is when the most malicious of his thoughts come out of hiding because he no longer has the strength to ward them off.  
  
Cue endless hours of relentless ruminating. Looping strings of self-loathing litanies. Obsessive replays of that night running on repeat. Sometimes, when he gets tired of punishing himself, he imagines what he would do if he ever got his hands on his attackers but more often than not he ends up scaring himself with just how  _vicious_  his fantasies turn out to be so he just goes back to brutalizing himself.  
  
He goes through the events of that night over and over in his head, tearing his memory apart trying to fill in the blanks, but it’s like searching for the word  _dendrochronology_  in a dictionary that has the entire  _D_  section ripped out. He stands in front of a mirror for an entire hour one evening, running his own hands along his body feeling sick to his stomach as he searches desperately for a familiar touch, a ghost of sensation, for any hint at all of what happened, but unlike the rings of trees and their intimate tales, he can unearth no such stories on his skin. He is quite certain that the fact that he cannot remember a single thing about that night is even more unsettling than if he could recall every sordid detail, and he is ashamed that something he has no recollection of can be affecting him so deeply.  
  
When he’s not trying to piece together  _what_  happened, he’s struggling to figure out  _why_. He asks Krista to tell him exactly what he’d said and done that night, needing to know which one of his actions could have caused someone to want to do this to him, because certainly he must have done _something_  to instigate or encourage it. He must have said something specific or given off a particular impression or even just  _looked_  a certain way.  
  
Krista tells him that it’s not because of anything he did or did not do, and he yells at her then hates himself for it, hates himself for letting his humiliation get the best of him.  
  
It's a humiliation not only because of the violation itself, but also from how it happened. When his friends teased him about Florian’s obvious attraction, Jean had pretended he didn’t care when really he had been fucking flipping out. It served not only to flatter him, but also to assuage the sneaking suspicion he’d had all his life that nobody would ever want him.  
  
While it may not have been true before, it definitely is now, and everyone knows it, too. They all saw how the only person to ever express an interest in Jean was only doing so because out of everyone there, they deemed  _him_  to be the best candidate for their sick intentions, like how a pack of wolves zeroes in on the weakest deer of the herd.  
  
The worst part is how Jean can’t understand why Florian did it. From what Krista told him, he’s guessing he’d made it pretty clear to Florian that his advances would not be rejected should he choose to go in that direction, so why had he still felt the need to take Jean the way he did?  
  
Ymir tries to explain to him that it’s not about sex, but that doesn’t make any fucking sense to Jean when literally all it was about, was sex.  
  
He yells at her, too.  
  
People stop treating him like he’s made of glass and instead start to tiptoe around him like he is a loose cannon, which he thinks might be a slight improvement, but what he really wants to be is nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

Mikasa doesn’t know how she let Eren talk her into doing this, but she finds herself bringing a tray of food to the boys’ dorms after Jean fails to show up at the mess hall for the fifth meal in a row.  
  
“You have to talk to him,” Eren had practically begged her earlier that evening. “I think he’s getting worse.”  
  
Mikasa had raised a somewhat amused eyebrow and noted, “You better watch yourself there, Eren; you keep talking like that and someone might start thinking you  _care.”_  
  
“Hey, fuck you,” Eren had objected, though without much vehemence, “I just need him back to normal ‘cause it’s no fun kicking his ass at everything when he’s not at one hundred percent.”  
  
Mikasa decided to humour Eren a little and agreed, though she had to ask  _why her_ , why did Eren think that  _she_  of all people could do anything for Jean that couldn’t simply be provided by someone else.  
  
“You’re good at taking care of people,” was Eren’s somewhat feeble reply.  
  
Mikasa thought this was an odd thing to say. Though she’s had years of practice protecting others, it’s always been in a more physical sense – fending off Armin’s bullies, keeping Eren well-fed. Always addressing a very specific problem with an equally straightforward solution. She does not know how to look out for people in the other way. The way that has less to do with defending something that already exists and more with rebuilding something that’s been broken.   
  
That’s when it occurred to Mikasa what Eren was  _really_  referring to, that being the part of her past that she has never spoken about to anyone outside of her family and Armin, and she is a little upset with Eren for assuming that she would be willing to talk about it now.  
  
Then again, she realised with a sudden emboldened clarity, maybe he’d assumed right.  
  
“Jean?” she calls out softly after having knocked on the door. “It’s Mikasa. Can I come in?”  
  
“Mikasa…?” comes Jean’s muffled voice from inside, sounding a bit confused.  
  
“I brought you some dinner. Sasha even gave you her chicken drumstick. I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you ought to savour.”  
  
There’s a rustling noise followed by slow, heavy footsteps, then Jean is opening the door, which had been unlocked the entire time, but Mikasa was not about to intrude upon Jean’s privacy without his explicit permission.  
  
He looks at her blankly for an extended moment before he shakes his head as if to clear a fog in his brain and he says awkwardly, “You can. Um. You can come in, if- if you’d like.  
  
She nods and follows him inside, her every step careful in a way that’s different from her usual calculated calm. Her movements have always been deliberate and measured, but for the purpose of deadly precision rather than this delicate handling better suited for building a house of cards, and she hopes she’s not insulting Jean by acting this way around him. Still, she would rather harm his pride than his sense of security. He has enough of the former to spare, anyway, she thinks to herself, allowing herself a small smile.  
  
Jean leads her inside. He sits down on his bunk and Mikasa extends the tray of food out to him with the unintrusive, almost reverent hands of someone who knows only too well what it’s like to have your body at someone else’s mercy.  
  
She settle down on the bed across from him and pretends not to notice the way the tray rattles in his grip or the uncomprehending expression with which he stares down at his meal, like it’s a riddle he doesn’t have the answer to. He picks up his fork, then puts it back down. Warily eyes the cup of water. Picks up his fork again, swallows hard, and just sits there, frozen with the utensil hovering right above his plate.  
  
Mikasa licks her lips nervously, almost beginning to regret coming here, and wondering if Jean feels the same way.  
  
“Did you want me to leave?” she finally asks.  
  
“What?” he asks, his head snapping up like a deer that’s just heard a branch crack. “No… No! I… Ugh, I’m sorry I’m being so… I’m just…”  
  
Watching him struggle for words is making her feel a little sick so Mikasa quickly says, “It’s okay.”  
  
Jean puts his fork back down yet again and looks up at her with a bit of a disgusted grin. “You must think I’m fucking pathetic.”  
  
“What I  _think,_ ” Mikasa replies without missing a beat, “Is that something terrible happened to you and you’re doing your best to deal with it.”  
  
“Something… terrible…” Jean repeats sluggishly, before he grinds out an awful, disparaging laugh. “More like… nothing.”  
  
Mikasa can’t help but to let out a sad sigh. Marco had talked to her about this, about how Jean continued to adamantly deny the severity of what had taken place. Mikasa doesn’t know what to do. Like she’d just told Jean, he’s dealing with everything as best he can, and perhaps, for now at least, they should let him do so, even if his way of dealing with it involves minimising it to near-nonexistence. She knows he needs to come to terms with what happened by his own accord, at his own pace, so she doesn’t want to push it on him, but at the same time, she suspects that there is a motive behind his denial that runs deeper than simply wanting to pretend it didn’t happen.  
  
Mikasa takes a deep breath and hopes that she’s doing the right thing by posing the question she throws out next.   
  
“Are you saying it was nothing because it really  _was_  nothing,” she asks slowly, “Or because you don’t think you have the  _right_  to feel like it wasn’t?”  
  
Jean does not reply but his face tells Mikasa everything she needs to know, and she thinks maybe she’s been able to reach some part of him that he hadn’t yet let come to light.  
  
Sure enough, Jean eventually says, “It’s just… It’s just that it could have been a lot worse.”  
  
“You could say that about pretty much anything,” Mikasa points out mildly.  
  
“Yeah, but this… Technically, nothing even happened. What they were going to… do… They didn’t actually end up doing it. So, yeah, of course I don’t have the f-fucking right…”  
  
Mikasa nearly shivers at the self-loathing in Jean’s voice, as well at the realisation that she knows what she has to do. What Eren had silently referred to before, that platform of understanding unique to her own experience, now is the time for it to be established.  
  
“Do you know how Eren and I met?” she asks Jean.  
  
He stares at her incredulously before his face tightens into a scowl. “Uh, no offence, but I’m not exactly interes—”  
  
“Slavers killed my parents before my eyes and kidnapped me with the intention of selling me to rich sickos in the capital,” Mikasa says, her voice almost frighteningly toneless considering the subject matter.  
  
A part of her can’t believe she’s sharing this part of her with another person but mostly she just feels detached, as though she’s talking about someone else’s life, someone she’d never met, whose name she does not know.  
  
Jean’s eyes widen. “Mikasa, I… Holy shit, I- I had no idea…”  
  
“Eren was the one who found me. The police wouldn’t have gotten there in time. Eren… saved me.”  
  
“Thank god for that,” Jean murmurs faintly. “Fuck, Mikasa, I’m so,  _so_  sorry…”  
  
Mikasa nods with a small, sad smile then says brightly, “But hey, it could’ve been a lot worse.”  
  
“Are you mocking me?” Jean demands, eyes flashing with a sudden anger that Mikasa was fully expecting because, as insensitive as it may seem, this is exactly how she intended to manipulate the conversation.  
  
“I mean, sure, they killed my family and carried me off into the woods,” she continues with a deliberately casual nonchalance to her tone, “But I didn’t  _actually_  end up getting sold as a sex slave - hell, they didn’t even touch me, so nothing  _really_  happened.”  
  
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Jean hisses. “But that is completely, totally, entirely, one hundred percent  _not_  the same thing as what I’m talking about.”  
  
“No,” Mikasa readily agrees, “But it’s still the same idea. Minimising what happened to you by comparing it to what did not, or to what has happened to others, which is completely irrelevant, really.”  
  
“Not the same thing,” Jean repeats, but this time he sounds a little less certain of himself.  
  
While he might think that she had recounted her story in such a way merely to make a certain point, the truth is that she went through almost the exact same self-condemning thought process as Jean is now. Even today, she sometimes thinks about how lucky she was, all things considered, so she should act more like it.  
  
“It took me a long time to learn how to be grateful for what didn’t happen without also diminishing what did,” she says solemnly. “But… I guess what it comes down to is that how you feel exists completely independently of what might have been or the worse things that have happened to other people. You’re entitled to feel whatever you’re feeling. You don’t need to try to… to justify anything.”  
  
Jean looks thoughtful, brow slightly furrowed in contemplation, but there’s also a shade of frantic desperation in his eyes, like he wants so badly to believe her but can’t quite manage it just yet. Mikasa, meanwhile, lowers her own gaze, feeling horribly bare and vulnerable after having voiced things that she has never spoken out loud before to anyone, let alone to a person she isn’t even that close with. But whatever they might have lacked in closeness they now make up for in understanding, and for the very first time Mikasa feels she’s been able to draw upon the horrors of her experiences in a way that helps not only herself, but someone else. She has often wondered if she is wrong for letting her past shape so much of her present, to the point where she fears it’s the only thing that defines her, but right now, there is none of that doubt, none of that fear.  
  
“You are more than what happened to you,” she tells him, tells them both.

 

* * *

 

After that, Jean’s friends take it upon themselves to eat with him in rotating small groups in the dormitory. The fact that Jean does not object to this is simultaneously relieving and troubling – it’s good that he is letting people in, but it’s also a testament to how much things have changed. How much  _he_  has changed.  
  
This evening, he is sitting on the floor by his bunk with Annie, Reiner and Eren, who has been so suspiciously tolerable lately that Jean occasionally entertains the idea of punching him in the face, just because he could probably get away with it. Then he remembers that while perhaps Eren might let it slide, Mikasa most certainly would not.

They’re about halfway through their meal when out of the blue, Annie says, “So I think I’ve found those two dirtbags.”  
  
Jean nearly chokes on his mouthful of mashed potatoes. Judging by the similar reactions of Eren and Reiner, this appears to be the first time they’re hearing this, too.  
  
“How do you know?” Eren asks.  
  
“I have my sources,” is Annie’s dubious reply.  
  
Reiner snorts. “What she means is she’s sleeping with some guy with a bowlcut from the 103rd.”  
  
Jean chokes again.  
  
Annie glares daggers at Reiner, who Jean could swear actually shrinks back a little, then she says, “Anyway. Turns out those guys were real idiots because they hadn’t even bothered to give you a fake name or regiment. They…” She falters a moment, a rare lapse in self-control, before she settles herself and continues, “People heard them bragging about it…”  
  
Jean stares fixedly at the ground, feeling the others’ eyes on him, waiting for his reaction.  
  
He does not give them one, because he can’t even figure out what it is.  
  
“Well, this is good, right?” Eren declares eventually. “Now we can—”   
  
“No,” Jean cuts in immediately, knowing exactly what Eren is going to say.  
  
Eren, and his fucking morality and passion and total inability to let any crime go unpunished.  
  
Sure enough, Eren looks over at him with a bit of an appalled expression. “Jean… We can’t just let them get away with it.”  
  
“As far as I’m concerned, they already have,” Jean replies wearily.  
  
“That’s bullshit.”  
  
“I don’t fucking care.”  
  
“Well, then think about this: they’ve gotten away with it this time, which means they’ll probably get away with it again.”  
  
“The fact that they couldn’t even be fucked to lie about their names does show a certain… confidence,” Annie agrees grimly.  
  
Eren nods before he looks Jean straight in the eye and says, “You could stop them. You could make sure they won’t ever put another person through this.”  
  
“Other people are not my problem,” Jean says listlessly, fully aware of how incredibly callous he sounds right now, but it is more or less the truth, and he can’t be bothered to either lie about it or try to change it.  
  
“Dude, what the fuck?” Eren snaps. “Are you really that fucking selfish?”  
  
Jean derives a bizarre relief from hearing the ‘old’ Eren again - no more of that walking on eggshells around him. He lets out a bitter punch of laughter. He knows he doesn’t need to answer that question, because yes, he  _is_  that selfish – selfish, and a coward to boot – and everyone else in the room knows it, too.  
  
Still, he can’t help but to wonder if it really counts as selfishness if it has so much to do with survival.  
  
Because he would rather die than go through with what Eren is pressuring him to do.  
  
He has no clue about the procedures when it comes to pursuing people for this kind of transgression but he can’t imagine it going very far without him having to get involved in some capacity. He just can picture it now. People asking him about that night and him being unable to answer a single question. Having to admit that nothing  _actually_  happened. The derision and scorn he would be met with when he confessed to having flirted with his would-be attacker.  
  
The humiliation and shame would literally kill him.  
  
“What if it was one of us?” Eren says suddenly, the frustration now apparent in his tone. “What if it happened to one of us because you didn’t fucking stop them?”  
  
Before Jean can even form an appropriately indignant response, Annie is saying flatly, “He doesn’t owe anyone anything. Not even us.”  
  
Jean shoots her a curious look, not having expected her to come to his defence like that, but infinitely grateful nonetheless.  
  
“Well, fine, but don’t you at least want to see these pieces of shit brought to justice?” Eren demands, obviously trying to switch tactics.   
  
“Eren…” Reiner says warningly, but it’s too late.  
  
“I don’t give a shit about  _justice,”_  Jean spits out, lips curling contemptuously around the word. “All I care about right now is making it through the fucking day.”  
  
_Oops._  
  
An unbelievably tense silence ensues that makes Jean want to bury himself alive. He didn’t mean to let that last part slip and consequently reveal to everyone in the room just how fucking pathetic he is. It’s been a week, for fuck’s sake. He should be over it by now, or at least made some sort of progress.  
  
He doesn’t realise that he’s dug his fingers so deeply into his fisted-up palms that he’s broken the skin until he hears Reiner’s startled voice saying his name.  
  
Blearily, Jean looks up to see Reiner looking down, worriedly eyeing Jean’s hands that are rested in his lap, blood under his nails.  
  
“Oh,” Jean says, staring blankly at them.  
  
“Jean…?” Eren asks in a small voice.  
  
“Mmm.”  
  
“Is it… is it really that bad?”  
  
The question catches Jean off guard, both with its content and the earnestness with which it was asked. Eren wasn’t intending to sound like he was skeptical or doubting the legitimacy of Jean’s feelings; it’s more like he is finally beginning to grasp the severity of the situation and has only just realised how out of his element he truly is, so he is simply trying to understand.  
  
“It…” Jean says, then his throat goes dry and he has to swallow several times before he settles for responding with a simple, “Yeah.”  
  
Eren seems to go pale, but the greens of his eyes flare ever-brighter with rage, and Jean thinks he sees something click into place behind them but he can’t be sure.

 

* * *

 

Eren, Mikasa and Reiner return to the barracks the following night with blood streaked down their shirts and their knuckles bruised and raw.  
  
Jean’s heart almost stops, because the only reason he can come up with for why his friends are in this condition is that they were attacked the same way he was. Whenever anyone presents themselves in even just marginally bad shape, that’s the first thing that comes to mind, regardless of how unlikely it is. It’s a testament to just how much the assault has warped his thinking, and the worst part is that he knows how silly and unreasonable he’s being but he just can’t help it. The thought gnaws and nibbles at his gut until he can’t think of anything else, and it makes him sick with worry because he can’t bear the idea of his friends ever having to go through the same thing.  
  
“What happened to you guys?” Jean demands, trying to keep the dread out of his voice.  
  
“Oh, nothing happened to  _us,”_  Reiner replies with a stunningly nonchalant shrug.  
  
“Justice happened,” Eren chimes in casually.  
  
“Or some version of it,” Mikasa adds, like it’s no big deal.  
  
Jean gapes at them for a moment before he composes himself and jokes that this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for him, except he’s not joking, really.

 

* * *

 

A short while later, Jean and Marco get a quiet moment alone as they do maintenance on their gear together.  
  
Jean has had a good couple of days. He’s been making it through entire training sessions without having to stop and crouch down and put his head between his knees. He eats in the dining hall with everyone else more and more often and stops trying to stare down anyone who looks at him. None of these things are particularly epic accomplishments, but Jean sometimes wonders if he is allowed to be pleased with himself nonetheless.  
  
“Hey, Jean?” Marco says, sounding a bit uncomfortable and making Jean slightly nervous.  
  
“Yeah?” he asks suspiciously.  
  
“Remember when… when I told you that you’re not a strong person?”  
  
Jean scoffs, feigning mortification. “How could I forget.”  
  
“Well, you can forget it now,” Marco replies with a small smile, seeming both earnest and a little embarrassed. “ ‘Cause fuck, was I ever wrong.”  
  
Jean finds himself at a total loss for words.  
  
He has been called many things in his short life, but ‘strong’ has never been one of them, and until now, he’d been okay with that because he knew it was a concept that did not apply to him anyway. He’d never had any particular need to be strong, so he never was, and he was not about to seek praise for something he had not earned.  
  
But then,  _that night_  happened, and everything changed. Suddenly he needed strength like never before. Every single thing he did felt like it required Herculean effort, but no one would ever be able to tell since the things he was doing were not the usual feats of hardship that one is normally commended for overcoming. He wasn’t killing Titans or fighting corruption or even just so much as lifting something heavy. Rather, he needed every ounce of will he had just to be able to perform such elementary tasks as speaking and eating and getting out of bed in the morning.  
  
He cannot deny that he began to feel a certain bitterness after a while, having to struggle so hard for so long just to do so little, and not receiving any sort of recognition for it. Of course, he can’t exactly blame anyone for this, since he was pretty skilled at Faking It, and besides, nobody is going to look at someone bothering to brush their teeth for the first time in two days and think,  _Wow, good on him!_  
  
It wasn’t even admiration that Jean was searching for, though. It was encouragement. Maybe even just simple acknowledgment. For someone to say,  _Hey, I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now, but I know you’re fighting really hard._  
  
Then again, he knows exactly how he would react to having this sentiment expressed to him: with bitter, self-loathing denial.  
  
Sure, he’s fighting hard, but maybe only just because he’s so fucking weak that it takes him his entire reservoir of strength to endure something that most people could handle without batting an eyelash. That he has to battle tooth and claw for every victory does not change the fact that the victories themselves are very miniscule indeed. Not even worth celebrating.  
  
Which is why, right now, as genuine and sincere as Marco’s words may be – and Jean  _knows_  they are, because he knows Marco – Jean cannot help but to feel he has no right to accept them. It would be like watering a weed in the woods and claiming credit for the entire forest. Jean would hate to trick Marco into being proud of him, to deceive him into believing Jean is a better person than he actually is. Marco deserves better than that.  
  
“I know what you’re thinking,” Marco says softly after it becomes apparent that Jean will not be responding any time soon.  
  
Normally, those five words in that precise order are among Jean’s most hated, along with  _I know how you feel_ , because ninety-nine percent of the time, they were completely false and to have someone claim to understand what you’re going through when they so blatantly, glaringly  _do not_  has always felt terribly belittling to Jean.  
  
It’s never that way with Marco, though. These past two, almost three years have taught Jean that not only does Marco never use this statement lightly, but that it is always true, that even when he doesn’t say it, Marco usually knows what Jean is thinking. It’s something that was alarming for Jean at first, not used to having someone around who is able to pick up on what he means without him having to be explicitly, often rudely, straightforward about it.  
  
“I want to feel good about it,” Jean mumbles, “I do, I swear, I do.”  
  
“Then do it,” Marco urges gently.  
  
Jean shakes his head with a bleak smile. “How can I?”  
  
“Because you deserve to,” Marco replies, like it’s really that simple. “Because you’re still fucking here and you’re getting better every day, you may not think so, but you are.”  
  
Jean swallows hard as he thinks about this. Thinks about seeing the bottom of his bowl of porridge for the first time in a week, about how smiling no longer feels like he’s exercising forgotten muscles that have atrophied from lack of use. He thinks of the planet and the moon and the tide of the seasons and how small he is in the grand scheme of things, which isn’t usually a reassuring concept but for some reason, right now, it is for him.  
  
There is no earth-shattering epiphany. There is no sudden breakthrough, no lifting of weight from his shoulders. In fact, the frostbite endures and the winter remains icier than ever, but for the first time he can also sense the quiet murmur of blood beginning to stir in his veins once again, reminding him of feeling and warmth and life. He may not be able to feel it just yet, but the promise of it will have to do.


End file.
